"Well," laughed Strahan, "I think you will have a chance to put one rebel to rout before I do. I don't blame you, remembering your feeling, but Merwyn probably saved my life, and I gave him my hand in a final truce. Friends we cannot be while he maintains his present cold reserve. As you told me, he said he would have done as much for any one, and his manner since has chilled any grateful regard on my part. Yet I am under deep obligations, and hereafter will never do or say anything to his injury."
"Don't trouble yourself about Mr. Merwyn, Arthur. I have my own personal score to settle with him. He has made a good foil for you and my other friends, and I have learned to appreciate you the more. YOU have won my entire esteem and respect, and have taught me how quickly a noble, self-sacrificing purpose can develop manhood. O Arthur, Heaven grant that we may all meet again! How proud I shall then be of my veteran friends! and of you most of all. You are triumphing over yourself, and you have won the respect of every one in this community."
"If I ever become anything, or do anything, just enter half the credit in your little note-book," he said, flushing with pleasure.
"I shall not need a note-book to keep in mind anything that relates to you. Your courage has made me a braver, truer girl. Arthur, please, you won't get reckless in camp? I want to think of you always as I think of you now. When time hangs heavy on your hands, would it give you any satisfaction to write to me?"
"Indeed it will," cried the young officer. "Let me make a suggestion. I will keep a rough journal of what occurs and of the scenes we pass through, and Blauvelt will illustrate it. How should you like that? It will do us both good, and will be the next best thing to running in of an evening as we have done here."
Marian was more than pleased with the idea. When at last Strahan said farewell, he went away with every manly impulse strengthened, and his heart warmed by the evidences of her genuine regard.
In the afternoon Blauvelt called, and, with Marian and her mother, drove to the station to take part in an ovation to Captain Strahan and his company. The artist had affairs to arrange in the city before enlisting, and proposed to enter the service at Washington.
The young officer bore up bravely, but when he left his mother and sisters in tears, his face was stern with effort. Marian observed, however, that his last glance from the platform of the cars rested upon herself. She returned home depressed and nervously excited, and there found additional cause for solicitude in a letter from her father informing her of the great disaster to Union arms which poor generalship had invited. This, as she then felt, would have been bad enough, but in a few tender, closing words, he told her that they might not hear from him in some time, as he had been ordered on a service that required secrecy and involved some danger. Mrs. Vosburgh was profuse in her lamentations and protests against her husband's course, but Marian went to her room and sobbed until almost exhausted.
Her nature, however, was too strong, positive, and unchastened to find relief in tears, or to submit resignedly. Her heart was full of bitterness and revolt, and her partisanship was becoming almost as intense as that of Mrs. Merwyn.
The afternoon closed with a dismal rain-storm, which added to her depression, while relieving her from the fear of callers. "O dear!" she exclaimed, as she rose from the mere form of supper, "I have both head-ache and heart-ache. I am going to try to get through the rest of this dismal day in sleep."